The evolution of phenotypic plasticity when environments fluctuate in time and space

Area of Science:

• Evolutionary biology
• Theoretical ecology
• Quantitative genetics

Background:

• Most studies examine environmental variation in time OR space, not concurrently.
• Understanding concurrent temporal and spatial environmental variation is crucial for evolutionary adaptation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the evolution of phenotypic plasticity under combined temporal and spatial environmental variation.
• To determine how genetic adaptation and plasticity interact when environments fluctuate in both time and space.

Main Methods:

• Theoretical modeling of evolutionary dynamics.
• Analysis of genetic adaptation to Markovian temporal fluctuations.
• Comparison with genetic adaptation to spatial fluctuations.

Main Results:

• Genetic adaptation to temporal fluctuations correlates with between-generation environmental autocorrelation, analogous to spatial adaptation and philopatry.
• Plasticity evolves to address fluctuations in the dimension with weaker genetic adaptation capacity.
• Discrepancies between temporal and spatial environment-trait relationships can lead to maladaptive plasticity (hyper- or hypo-plasticity).
• Spatial genetic differentiation can counteract maladaptive plasticity, leading to counter-gradient variation.

Conclusions:

• Space-for-time substitutions in empirical studies are challenging due to differing temporal and spatial environmental dynamics.
• Key parameters include parent-offspring environmental correlations and the relationship between developmental and selection environments.
• Measuring these parameters is essential for validating space-for-time substitution assumptions in ecological research.